B2 0258+35 VLA and VLBI HI absorption spectra

We report high-resolution Very Large Array (VLA) and European VLBI Network (EVN) observations of HI 21cm absorption from a young, compact steep-spectrum radio source, B2 0258+35, nested in the early-type galaxy NGC 1167, which contains a 160kpc HI disc.

Our VLA and EVN HI absorption observations, modelling, and comparison with molecular gas data suggest that the cold gas in the centre of NGC 1167 is very turbulent (with a velocity dispersion of ~90km/s) and that this turbulence is induced by the interaction of the jets with the interstellar medium (ISM). Furthermore, the ionised gas in the galaxy shows evidence of shock heating at a few kpc from the radio source. These findings support the results from numerical simulations of radio jets expanding into a clumpy gas disc, which predict that the radio jets in this case percolate through the gas disc and drive shocks into the ISM at distances much larger than their physical extent.